atomic bomb dome and peace memorial

so, what did we do in hiroshima?

our first day there, monday (I can't believe that was a week ago) we did sightseeing around hiroshima. we saw the atomic bomb dome, which they left in the same state it was in when the bomb exploded on august 6th 1945 at 8:15 am. the building was one of several concrete structures that survived the blast and the ensuing fire (remember, 4,000 degrees celcius, which is about 8,000 degree f). that's the picture with the skeleton of a dome on top of a building. then we walked through peace park, which was the thriving downtown when the bomb hit and was just completely leveled. instead of rebuilding it, the japanese constructed a park there, with the peace museum and the children's statue. on top of the statue is sadako, holding a crane

if you never read the book sakado and a thousand paper cranes stop reading this blog right now and go to your local library and check it out. but to fill you in, sadako was 2 years old when the bomb exploded in hiroshima. she recovered from her injuries, but about 10 years later, she began to get sick. she was diagnosed with leukemia and checked into a hospital. there is a japanese tradition that if you fold a thousand paper cranes, any wish you make will come true. so she fiercely set about folding anything she could get her hands on -- chewing gum wrappers, origami paper, tissues, medicine wrappers. she got up somewhere around 900 and then she died. since then, children from around the world have folded paper cranes and sent them to hiroshima as a call for peace and in remembrance of the innocent children who died in the bombing, and in all wars

these pictures are chains of paper cranes on the left, and paper cranes arranged to spell out the word peace and set up the whole scene. it was very powerful. while we were there, a school group was visiting and they group tons of chains of paper cranes and stood up and sang a song in front of the statue (the picture with the students in the yellow hats). the entire experience was really incredible

while we were there, a woman walked by with her husband, and in a deep southern drawl said "wow, she folded a thousand cranes and she still died? she must've been really bad." that was very upsetting. with a mindset like that, why come?

then we walked further down and came to the memorial monument for the bombing

on the left is the english version of the inscription -- it is in about 10 different languages on different plaques, explaining what the memorial is, that in the middle is a register of the deceased, which they update every year on august 6th as they identify for of the ashes held as city call, and the powerful inscription "let all the souls here rest in peace for we shall not repeat the evil"

then it was a remembrance hall where the theme was water, in memory of all the people who died begging for water, and drowned in the rivers as they staggered off to them dazed and dying from their burns

after that we went to the peace museum which was as powerful a call for peace and the eradication of nuclear weapons as you could imagine. it also repositioned the city and the experience we had all just had as tragic of course, but tragedy with a purpose -- and that is to educate the rest of the world of the suffering caused by war and nuclear weapons and to push for the end of them both. tragic, absolutely. but how much more tragic if we do not learn from it

with this as our backdrop, we were ready to go visit schools. and that update will have to wait until tomorrow